The dark circles under my eyes had deepened overnight and there wasn’t enough make-up in the world to keep my mother’s all-knowing glare from solving the riddle. Her long, drawn-out breath alone was evidence that she’d figured out I wasn’t getting much sleep at night. Over the past eight days, I’d gotten good at evading her questions, using her couch to drown myself every time he played. Being alone, with pieces of him scattered throughout my house, it was too much. If I could, I’d sleep at my mom’s too, but I wasn’t a teenager who’d broken up with her high school sweetheart. I was a grown woman who’d had her heart handed to her in a parking lot. I suppose the grown-up thing required me to make nice with my dignity and show up to work looking partially human.
Atlas whined, his nose nudging my hand, reminding me all was not lost. My mother’s stare felt like a pinch on the cheek, but I ignored her, keeping my eyes fixed to the television screen. It was the only link I had to him. Ray leaned over, shifting her weight on the couch to grab her giant thirty-two ounce Diet Coke from the coffee table. Atlas pranced over to her, laying his head in her lap. She nuzzled her fingers behind his ears and glanced up at me. Her smile small, weary, and because I’d known her my whole life, I could see the dash of fear. Like all good best friends, she’d learned very quickly this week to avoid the subject of Mark. His name was like the bell for Pavlov’s dog, bringing on the same reaction—crying, in my case— every time. I guess she didn’t want to feel responsible anymore for cutting me open again and again.
Exhausted and drained, I watched as the Tampa Bay players skated onto the ice. And there he was, his number coming to the surface in the sea of blue, a small stab with every beat of my pulse. The only thing keeping me from completely shutting down this week had been the small flame of anger blooming in my belly. He’d closed me out, slammed the door in my face, turned off his phone, and made the space he put between us unbearably vast. I never knew it could be this hard to breathe.
I knew what Mark had seen, and I knew how stupid I’d been for not kicking Ben in the balls the minute he’d touched me. All I’d wanted was to cut my ties, give him closure, and it wasn’t in my nature to be a jerk about it. It didn’t matter, because Ben was gone now, and by the way he’d left the office Friday evening, it was clear he was gone for good. His contrite “everything will work out” had been his way of saying have a nice life, sorry I messed everything up. His leaving was the check in the box I’d hoped would make Mark understand we could move on, but I hadn’t had the chance to tell him. I’d called him a hundred times. I’d left at least twenty messages. But there were some things too intimate to leave on a voicemail. I wanted to tell him I loved him, the one thing he hadn’t let me say the day he left. He’d interrupted me, told me he’d needed a break, and I hadn’t been about to drop the L word if he was jumping overboard. Hadn’t I proven to him I wasn’t her, that I cared about him, that he could trust me?
The sound of the ref’s whistle pulled me back to reality, and I realized my fingers were balled into fists and my nails were digging into the palm of my hand.
“Stevie? Are you going to answer me?” Mom’s lips were set into a grim line.
My eyes swept to the television, and the clock ticking down on the screen alarmed me. The game had already been on for seven minutes and I’d completely zoned out.
“What was the question?” I asked, faking a smile.
“When was the last time you slept?”
My shoulders drooped and Reagan heaved a sigh. “I’ve been busy at work.”
Mom turned her head to the screen and I followed her gaze. There was a fight happening behind Tampa’s net. Mark stood out like a beacon on the outskirts of all the mayhem as he tried to wrap his arms around a player, number twenty-two from the opposing team, in what looked like an attempt to hold him back. The referees broke it up as my mother asked, “How long have the two of you been fighting?”
Tears crept to the surface and stung the corners of my eyes. “I think it’s more than a fight.”
A sob kicked inside my chest, but I gulped it down with a ragged breath.
My mom’s face fell and she glanced at Reagan, who nodded so carefully I figured she was trying to hide it from me.
“You think it’s over?” I accused her.
She exhaled, a frown working its way over her lips. I didn’t like the pity in her eyes. “He hasn’t called.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“What happened?” My mom’s voice was tinted with the same shade of anger I’d used as a life rope this week.
Mom sat there with soft eyes, listening to me fall apart as I told her how my world had been turned upside down. I’d told her everything about Mia, and Ben, about how Mark didn’t trust me, and how all I wanted was to shake him, kiss him, and tell him he was so dumb and had everything all wrong.
“You’re not going to like what I have to say,” she announced as I brushed away the tears from my lashes.
“But you’re going to say it anyway.” I surmised.
“He’s not ready, Stevie. He’s got a monkey on his back, and what he saw between you and Ben isn’t going to help. He’s gotta work through it and you have to let him.”
“And what if after he’s worked through it…” She narrowed her eyes at my irritation. “He decides he doesn’t want me in his life?”
It was Reagan who answered, “You don’t need a man to have self-worth, to be whole. You have to let yourself be okay with being alone. If he ends it, he ends it, it isn’t the end of you.”
The rational part of my brain accepted the truth in her statement, but my heart, it was hung up on the feel of his lips, how his touch felt like home. It needed the smell of his soap, and the way he’d look at me with eyes that said my heart beats for you.
“He left Atlas with you, that’s a good sign.” My mother’s smile reached her eyes, and every muscle in my body begged me to hold on to that little offering of happiness.
“Or…” Reagan hedged. “Worst-case scenario, he breaks up with you, and you guilt him into letting you keep the dog.”
One of those, hysterical, overtired, and definitely needed, barks of laughter bubbled up my throat.
I was laughing when I turned my attention back to the game. There were only two minutes left of the first period and Tampa must have scored a goal, because they were up by one. They needed a win. Their playoff spot was in jeopardy after the three losses they’d had this trip, and I couldn’t help but notice Mark’s game had become sloppy and brutish. He was off, and on top of everything else, I worried he’d take the burden of each loss personally. The ache in my cheeks subsided as my smile waned. Mark was in his own zone with the puck and was about to take it behind the net when a Carolina player, number twenty-two, crushed Mark so hard into the boards the entire arena gasped. The sound of it lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. The loud crunch reverberated in my ears and the next breath I needed to take jammed in my throat. Mark’s body, like a rag doll, crumpled, while the arena erupted in cheers. His helmet hit the ice and flew off as it bounced, skidding into the back of the net.
“Holy shit,” Reagan’s voice was like the soft tin of an old radio, distant and choppy.
My vision failed and everything around me splotched in black. All I was able to focus on was the way Mark’s arms were splayed to the side and not moving. I didn’t hear the whistle blow, and as the camera zoomed in, I’d only had a second to see Mark’s face before his entire team surrounded him. His eyes were closed.
I hadn’t eaten much today, but the small amount I’d managed to put into my stomach threatened to find its way back up. I took two steps and fell onto my knees in front of the television. I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder as they replayed what had happened over and over again, at all different angles, and in slow motion. I watched with horror, hoping when they showed the ice again, he’d be sitting up.
He wasn’t.
Get up.
Get up.
Get up. Get up. Get up.
The emergency medical staff moved slowly across the ice with a stretcher and my entire body went numb.
Get up.
Stand.
Oh God, let him stand.
When the network went to a commercial break, the fear I’d kept on a leash snapped.
“Stevie… calm down…” Reagan’s soothing voice was like nails on a chalkboard.
I stood too fast and glittered specs of light exploded in my periphery. I grabbed my phone from the coffee table, and my fingers sprinted across the keypad, but like it had been all week long, his number sent me directly to voicemail. He wasn’t going to answer, but I dialed it anyway. I needed to hear his familiar voice telling me he would call me back as soon as he was able. The promise I planned to hold onto until I got answers.
“It’s back on!” my mother shouted, and I dropped my phone to the floor.
They had him on the stretcher, affixing some type of collar around his neck. Too many people hovered over him, too many speculations coming from the commentators, but the dark locks of his hair stood out between the gaps. His teammates were a blur of blue and white as the medics lifted the stretcher and moved toward the exit.
“He’s not moving. Why isn’t he moving?” Tears boiled over into sobs as dread wrapped its fingers around my throat.
A commercial blared from the speaker, stealing my last glance. Trapped in my own skin, I began to pace, blocking out the false reassurances my best friend was trying to give me, and calculating the flight time between Tampa and Raleigh. How fast could I get from the airport to the arena? I hit a wall. The game would be long over, his team, flying to the next city. Mark was only one player. Games would still be played, even if he was unconscious and alone in a hospital bed. They had trainers and medical staff, and stuff like this happened all the time, didn’t it? That loud crunch, the way his strength dissolved onto the rink floor, his body a pile of bones and dust. I’d get a flight, I’d go to him and…
My mother’s warm hands grabbed the tops of my arms. “You’re going to pass out,” she warned. “Ray, grab her some water.” She shook me lightly. “Sit down, sweetheart, you need to breathe.”
The sound of the game was white noise in the background. They hadn’t stopped the play, they’d put him aside and kept going.
My tongue was heavy in my mouth as I found my mother’s eyes and she asked, “Who can you call?”
“What?” Confusion addled my senses.
“Who could you call, Stevie, to find out what happened?”
“He won’t answer.”
“I know, sweetie.” Mom had reverted back to the days when I was five and I’d needed her to chase away invisible boogie men.
“Bryson,” Reagan whispered.
I moved past my mom without a word, bending down I picked up my phone. He was playing, but he could call me during the intermission. Tears began to flow again, but I’d left him a coherent enough message, and when the horn signaling the end of the period sounded, I’d never been so grateful and terrified in my entire life.
“We’re all praying for him,” the coach had said to the nameless faces of the media.
And when asked for comment on his way out to the bus, Bryson waved off the camera, and for a half a second, his haunted eyes caught the lens and the desolation almost gutted me entirely. That moment was on a loop inside my head as I lie in my bed with my phone clutched in my hand. Sometime after ten, I’d convinced Reagan and my mom, not without promising to call them as soon as I got home, being alone was the best option.
Bryson never called. Anxiety and fear had settled inside the muscles of my shoulders, weaved into the striations with anger. It was after eleven, the team would be on a plane by now. I’d left several messages for Bryson, for Mark. I’d watched the post-game interviews hoping for information. The only explanation the coach had given was that Mark was at a local hospital being treated for an upper body injury and a possible concussion. A small brick of worry had been removed from my shoulder when he’d said Mark had regained consciousness before EMS had carried him off the ice, but there was nothing to keep the numbness at bay. It was the only way I could keep a hold on myself.
I turned my head on my pillow to check the clock again when my phone vibrated in my hand… I almost dropped it. I flew into an upright position, my shaking fingers swiping manically at the lock screen.
“Stevie?”
“Oh God, Molly.” I choked. “P-please tell me he’s okay, I can’t get a hold of—”
“He’s okay…” Her voice cracked. “I think.”
The dam of panic inside my chest ruptured and poured out of me in waves. Tears cascaded down my cheeks as I asked, “What happened?”
“The trainer called Mom about five minutes ago, said he might have a mild concussion, broke some ribs, but the good news, they ruled out a spinal injury. They’ll keep him overnight for observation. We’ll know more in the morning.”
Relief slowed the rhythm of my heart.
He’s conscious. He’s alive. He’s okay.
“Did you talk to him?”
“No. Mom did, though. Said he sounded like he was in a lot of pain.”
He was in pain and all by himself. I needed to be there for him, touch the heat of his skin, hold his hand, let his fingers lace with mine, and anchor me to his side.
“I’m a mess…” I admitted through my tears. “I saw it happen, and…”
The sureness in her voice faded. “I know… I’ve seen him get hurt, but for a second, I thought this… this is it.”
I worked a swallow past the lump in my throat as I said, “Thank you… thank you so much for calling me.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t think to call you right away, I was… we all were…”
I blew out a thick breath. “It’s okay, Molly, he’s your brother. I just wish when I switched phones a few weeks ago, I hadn’t lost some of my contacts. I would have called you instead of Bryson.”
“What did he have to say? Did they tell him anything?”
“He never responded, I tried Mark, too, but—”
I could hear the quiet whistle of her breathing as the silence expanded.
“He’s stubborn, Stevie. I don’t know what happened between you two, he wouldn’t tell me, but whatever it was, don’t give up. I know how much he cares about you, and I know how much Mia cost him. Give him a call tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll need a friendly voice.”
“I won’t give up.”
“Don’t… he’s crazy about you.”
I wanted to take her words and find the first plane that would take me to him. “Call me if you hear anything?”
“I promise, and the same to you. Bryson probably had his phone off like usual, if he calls with any developments—”
“I’ll let you know.”
I stared at the phone in my hand after I ended the call, the news not really easing the tangled bulk of nerves in my stomach.
He’s conscious. He’s alive. He’s okay...
For the hundredth time tonight, I lifted the phone to my ear. It rang this time, and the expectant beat of hope thrummed in my veins. Maybe he’d answer, maybe he’d let me in. Mark’s voice droned, sewing itself into my pulse and it smothered my hope as quickly as it had sprouted. My eyes emptied over my lashes as I left one last voicemail.
“I’m scared …” I exhaled a shuddered breath as the salt coated my lips. My chest was caving in. The anvil of this night pressed into my sternum and the pain of it caused me to sputter my words. “I l-love you so much… and it’s so real it hurts… please… let me hear your voice.”
I shut my eyes, clenching them, until the drum in my head went quiet.